Colorado-born eleven year old Marnie McBride (Vivien Endicott Douglas) is mourning the loss of her beloved mother as she settles into her new home in Scotland with her widowed father (Jason Connery), who takes her to a run-down junk shop on her eleventh birthday. There, she is given a box of toy animals by a mysterious old man (Peter Mullan), which spring to life (they are voiced by Rik Mayall, Siobhan Redmond, Alan Cumming and Simon Callow) the next morning. She soon learns from these creatures that they are on an important quest to find an ancient book that holds a dark magical power within its pages, and need to find it before the evil shape shifter, Toledo (Tony Donaldson) does first. Marnie reluctantly offers to help, but finds she has her own fair share of problems to deal with, as she tries to make some friends (Krystina Coates) at her new school, as well as put up with the classroom bullies (Maxi Moffatt, Sean Young and Fergus Nimmo).